scarecrow reviews

Jack of Jumps - David Seabrook

2006-06-14T11:09:00.000+01:00

Jack of Jumps
by David Seabrook
(Granta Books 8.99)

PUT UP OR SHUT UP: DAVID SEABROOK AT THE LAST CHANCE SALOON.

In Jack of Jumps David Seabrook attempts to identify Jack the Stripper, a serial killer who murdered at least six prostitutes in the mid-sixties and dumped their naked bodies across west London. What Seabrook does impressively is lay out in gruesome detail the police investigation into the murders. What he fails to do is finger the killer. When I was introduced to Seabrook at the launch party for Tom McCarthy’s novel Remainder at the end of last year, he told me the murderer was still alive and he was named in this book. I thought this unlikely then, and I remain just as sceptical after reading his text. The publishing industry has been running scared from the absurdly stringent UK libel laws for decades. Clearly, neither Seabrook’s publishers nor the libel lawyers they consult would allow him to name the man he insinuates is the killer; nonetheless it took me just a few minutes at the British Library to identify this individual as former Metropolitan Police Detective Andrew John Cushway. I must stress here that there is no smoking gun. Detective Superintendent William Baldock who investigated Cushway, and whose theory is disinterred by Seabrook, ‘in the end failed to build a case against the suspect’ (page 362). Short of a fit up, there was and there remains no evidence which might have led to Cushway being charged, let alone convicted, for the nude murders. Indeed, according to Seabrook even Baldock believed that if Cushway was the killer, he would strike again after the murder of Bridie O’Hara, but the killings stopped. Seabrook’s response to this is qualified (presumably at the insistence of his publishers and their lawyers) but ultimately unambiguous, the relevant passage runs in part "If – and it’s a big if – this man were the murderer and revenge his motive, then he would have good reason to stop when he did... Well bad things, like good things, must come to an end. That’s life I suppose, and it doesn’t mean you have to kill yourself. So let’s just say: The suspect did not kill himself. He is not dead." (page 363)

The police files on Jack the Stripper remain closed to the public, and yet Seabrook was granted access to them; which naturally raises the question as to why he was allowed to review this material. Among other things, it seems likely that the old bill did not like the ongoing speculation about the identity of Jack the Stripper, which for the past thirty-five years has tended to implicate serving or retired Met officers. Indeed, among the more recent theories to do the rounds was one to be found in Jimmy Evans and Martin Short’s book The Survivor (Mainstream, Edinburgh 2001), which named deceased top cop Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler as the nude murderer. While Seabrook spills much ink dismissing the ‘Big John’ and Freddie Mills theories about the identity of Jack the Stripper, and gleefully character assassinates Brian McConnell (recently deceased author of Found Naked And Dead, a 1974 book on the nude murders published by New English Library), he doesn’t even mention Tommy Butler as a possible fit for the fiend. While I don’t think Evans and Short prove that Butler was Jack the Stripper, I find their solution to his identity more satisfying than Seabrook’s use of Cushway. That said, I would assume members of the Metropolitan Police force much prefer having a low ranking officer who was dismissed from the service in 1962 identified as the killer, to a top cop like Butler; which might explain why Seabrook was granted access to the closed police files.

But let’s return to Cushway and address why he is so easy to identify from the information Seabrook provides. Jack of Jumps tells us the dates on which Cushway committed various petty crimes, the places these took place, and names a witness. Now, a serving police officer convicted of committing burglaries and jailed as a result was likely to be enough of a news story to make the national press in 1962. Since there are precise dates for the crimes, coverage of a conviction might be found easily enough simply by raking through old newspapers. That said, these days many research libraries have digital editions of newspapers; but the only readily available electronic version of a newspaper covering the sixties is The Times. But this one digitised newspaper was all I (or anyone else) needed to identify Cushway very quickly. I entered search terms provided by Seabrook; the name of a witness to one of Cushway’s petty crimes, viz Arthur Cox, and one of the business premises broken into (I choose Permutit); and then it was simply a matter of selecting search dates (I used 13 September 1962 to 31 December 1963). My first attempt at identifying Cushway worked, since the story ‘Prison For Black Sheep Detective’ (30 November 1962) came up on the screen in front of me a few seconds later. Given that it is much quicker to do a digital search than a manual one, this is the route to the information the overwhelming majority of researchers are likely to utilise, which means that like me they would be led directly and very quickly to The Times report on Cushway’s 1962 court appearance, rather than that of some other newspaper. Seabrook, who projects a self-image as an indefatigable researcher, presumably knows this, and as a consequence ought to have concluded that some of those reading and reviewing his book would do just that. So having conjured up this Times news report on my first stab at finding it, I was surprised to experience a sense of deja vu as I read it.

I have no problem with plagiarism, since if something has been written well enough by another author, my inclination is to reuse it rather than rewrite it. Indeed, there are extended passages of other writer’s out-of-copyright material in a number of my novels; and two of my books consist chiefly of reworked citations from pre-twentieth-century authors. I find the ongoing press scandals about authors who plagiarise ridiculous, but I am nonetheless careful about what material I recycle in those of my books I sell to commercial publishers. This is a matter of pragmatism, I don’t want my books removed from circulation and therefore I prefer to avoid blatant breaches of copyright. Thus I find it surprising that much of The Times story about Cushway is reproduced not only without attribution, but virtually word for word, sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph, on pages 356 and 357 of Seabrook’s book, with only slight changes such the disgraced detective’s name being replaced with phrases such as ‘the man’. This is a high risk strategy on Seabrook’s part since the very structure of his book (with the lacuna of the unnamed man at its centre), is going to lead any clued-up reader to this anonymous but copyrighted piece from The Times. Seabrook thus appears to be actively willing that the censure of the literary establishment be heaped upon him. Or perhaps he thinks liberals are too thick to spot exactly how he’s taunting them. Judging by the review his book received from David Jays in The Observer of 14 May 2006, he may be right. Jays writes that Seabrook: ‘focuses his outsider identification on the killer: both of them watching, waiting and contemptuous...’ but makes no mention of Seabrook’s audacious plagiarism; and so we can deduce from this that he probably hasn’t done the few minutes research that led me, and would lead any other competent reviewer, to The Times article about Cushway. It seems Seabrook’s ‘real crimes against the bourgeoisie’ (crimes against the ‘rights’ of property are what capitalists most fear) are safe from exposure where literary ‘talent’ of the ‘calibre’ of Robert McCrum (books editor at The Observer) reigns supreme. Seabrook taunts the literati with his obnoxious opinions about working girls, while perhaps believing they’ll never catch him out at his real tricks.

While I have absolutely no problems with the use to which Seabrook puts the Times article on Cushway, it is simultaneously symptomatic of what I suspect is wrong with his book taken en bloc. Since I don’t have access to the original Jack the Stripper police files, I can’t prove that Seabrook has used them as literally as he has The Times piece, but I suspect this to be the case. In Jack of Jumps, Seabrook sees everything from the point of view of a cop, which is why he often misses the broader picture. Like a cop he wants to finger somebody as the murderer, and it’s Andrew John Cushway who is in the frame, but there is no evidence to sustain Seabrook’s insinuations. The case against Cushway consists simply of the fact that in 1962 he broke into various premises in an attempt to make cop colleagues who he felt had ostracised him look stupid; so Seabrook’s theory (borrowed from Baldock) is merely the following: might he not perhaps have also murdered between six and eight women to wind up the Mets? The leap from minor break-ins to serial killing is too great to be credible without additional evidence, and there isn’t any. And again, if Cushway was caught doing petty break-ins simply because he was careless enough to travel all the way to them on his own moped and its licence number gave him away, then it seems unlikely he was competent enough as a criminal to carry out a series of murders undetected. Seabrook doesn’t show Cushway to be connected to these macabre killings in any way whatsoever. He ought to be ashamed of himself for making it so easy to identify this apparently still living seventy year old as the individual he suspects of being the killer, and he should issue an immediate and full public apology to Cushway. Forget the libel laws, individuals like Seabrook ought to put up or shut up. He should have written his book on Jack the Stripper without fingering Cushway, since he simply hasn’t got the evidence to back up his insinuations.

This review is taken from ::: The Stewart Home Society :::

Stewart Home, 43, is the enfant terrible of the UK post-punk avant-garde art movement and cult writing circuit. He is the authorof over 20 books including Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton, 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess and his most recent, highly acclaimed, novel Tainted Love. Famous for his elaborate hoaxes and agit-prop art events, and feted by the likes of Kathy Acker, Iain Sinclair and the NME, he is often referred to as the English successor to William Burroughs. For more information please see: www.stewarthomesociety.org

Sex Crimes of the Futcher - Billy Childish

2006-06-14T11:05:00.000+01:00

Sex Crimes Of The Futcher

by Billy Childish
2005, Hangman Books.

Rating: *****

Billy Childish is a man so out of step with the current times that he may well be a saint. This Renaissance man is looked upon as an oddity, as a jack-of-all-trades: a musician who writes poetry, novels and paints? This is confusing to the critics, who feel that to be authentic one must specialize. Surely the writing must be shite if the music is good? Or vice versa? Or if the paintings are what matters, the rest is surely a distraction! We have been jaded by celebrities who suddenly think that they can write, actors fronting crap bands, singers popping up as actors, politicians as novelists… the “jack-of-all-trades, master-of-all” is a rare commodity.

I have seen Billy Childish play with the Buff Medway’s a few times. I found him to be mesmerizing, the experience intense, cathartic. Well Jesus, the man understands rock’n’roll, it’s that simple. Not many people do these days, but Billy does and he can knock out a good tune pretty effortlessly. It’s all you should want from a band, really.

The books continue the high watermark set by the music. “My Fault”, was a classic of sorts, an outstanding piece of confessional literature. Billy bravely decided to present the work as a novel, firmly aligning himself with the Bukowski’s and the John Fante’s of the world rather than all the bloody memoirists. I mean really, does any young reader want to grow up to be like Augusten Burroughs? And you can see the confusion he provokes in the documentary “Billy Childish: Is Dead”. There is a scene were Billy again asserts the fact that the books are novels, not memoirs. The interviewers head practically explodes while he tried to get it around this revolutionary concept.

So Billy’s latest, “Sex Crimes of The Futcher”, is mired firmly in William Loveday’s early years – the shit jobs, art school, the grinding poverty and the relationship with his girlfriend, Karima, whom William refers to as “The Troll”. The relationship with Karima is one of the big thematic threads here, a relationship based on a kind of mutual masochism – Karima is needy and seemingly subservient, William is dismissive of her, disgusted by her in a way, but more disgusted by the cruelty he finds himself capable of around her. Much has been made of the person that Karima may or may not have been based upon, but regardless this is an exceptionally honest portrayal of human relationships at their most dysfunctional. And the author spares no detail, nor tries to make heroes or villains out of either of the two leads: everyone’s failings are held up to the interrogators glare.

This is also a book about art. Not just the art that William Loveday produces, but Art itself. The book is as much a philosophical debate about art and its place in society as it is a novel. A chapter entitled “Authenticity Over Originality” lays out a fairly usable manifesto for art (one echoing the Stuckist manifesto that Billy was instrumental in creating):

“Truth and authenticity are above fashion, lying and trying to appear interesting. Some things appear to be the same as other things, yet they aren’t; and other things may appear to be separate, but they also aren’t. This is because all things are joined by invisible threads and all things live in a state of flux, changing from moment to moment. They are not really solid or existing at all, but merely appear to be so. But despite all of his, you cant walk on water or disappear thru brick walls. This is because reality is stubborn and insistent. That’s the whole truth, everything else is just a lot of sarcasm, brought about by people reading too many books.” (With apologies for altering the original spelling)

The title, and the above apology are to do with the fact that this is the first book Billy has published in his uncorrected, dyslexic hand. I thought that this might have been a distracting, or even an annoying move, but somehow it works. It gives the words a rhythm and flow all of their very own, and put me in mind of reading some Victorian penny dreadful written in non-modern English.

If you like books with Voice, this one has it in spades – as well as working class fury, bitter self-reflection, exploding lemons and tantalizing autobiographical glimpses. Ladies and gentlemen – Billy Childish. Long may he continue.

Tony O'Neill © 2006.

In a previous life Tony O’Neill played keyboards for bands and artists as diverse as Kenickie, Marc Almond and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. After moving to Los Angeles his promising career was derailed by heroin addiction, quickie marriages and crack abuse. While kicking methadone he started writing about his experiences on the periphery of the Hollywood Dream and he has been writing ever since. His autobiographical novel DIGGING THE VEIN will be published in Feb 2006 by Contemporary Press, in the US and Canada. Wrecking Ball Press plan to release a UK edition Summer 2006. He lives in New York where he works a variety of odd jobs and writes.

More details can be found at http://www.tonyoneill.net/

Delores Philips - The Darkest Child

2006-03-17T17:20:00.000Z

Delores Philips - The Darkest Child
Marion Boyers Publishing Ltd.
£9.99 paperback.

Rating : ***

The Darkest Child tells of fair-skinned Rozella Quinn’s many children of every shade, and their escape from – or survival under – her maniacal and cruel brand of parenting. It is set in 1958 in a small Georgia town during the outfall of de-segregation – long before psychology reached the armchair. Tangy Mae, the darkest of Rozella’s children, yearns for a better life and seeks it through education – a route Rozella attempts routinely to sabotage with violence and by forcing Tangy Mae, with her older sisters, into domestic and sexual slavery. Through Tangy Mae’s first-person narrative we observe a world where the tension of racial divides and abuses are mirrored in the internal family world.

The narrator’s self-conscious language, laden with uncomfortable description, lends the account a feeling of being over-written in places; but then again, her verbosity could have been devised by Philips to illustrate the protagonist’s youthful attempts to intellectually distance herself from the restraints of her family and of society. The feeling is she is still close to events at the time of this story’s telling.

Tangy Mae’s voice cannot be considered objective; it is closer to a diary than a report, despite seldom granting us insight into the impressive intellect other characters speak of her possessing. But throughout her narrative there is little to demonstrate that this intellectual superiority would offer her a psychological escape any more successful than the attempts of her siblings.

In the Quinn family, brutality is routine – though the mother is the sole distributor of it. The children offer one another a tenuous support system; only a local man, Velman, seeks to interrupt the abuse, rescuing Tangy Mae’s mute sister, Martha Jean, and marrying her. One might question the wisdom of involving himself in such mania; but it seems it is the novel’s intention to consider such questions of involvement, in terms of racial and family conflict.

The only character who offers any constructive thought on these matters is Junior, an activist seeking equality in a lagging society. Junior is lynched early on and leaves behind him a moral vacuum that the recipients of cruelty inflicted by evil white men and the wicked Rozella cannot fill. In a world where most characters are wicked or wretched there are few occasions where Tangy Mae reveals any insight into their inner lives beyond their responses to outer circumstances. Are we really to believe that Rozella is sometimes nice? Nice enough for her children to take her in once they’ve escaped her branding iron, ice pick and scissors? Once she has murdered one of them and prostituted others? There are only a few incidents in which Tangy Mae expresses a belief, or hope, that there is a lighter side to her mother; one being when Rozella hands her a flaccid, grey bra to mark her passage into adulthood at her school prom – not long before sending her to the whorehouse. At times, Rozella’s character is so slasher horror that her children’s hellish experiences can be viewed only with detachment, rather than the emotional investment her narrative fails to elicit. The point might be whether or not Tangy Mae is requesting our empathy at all, or merely conveying the facts – in which case we must consider the occasionally absurd description (in one instance she likens a belting to her head to a tourniquet) and whether, if this language were pared back to reveal a colder horror, we might more readily empathise.

The existence of cruelties inflicted between races and family members in this novel cannot be denied. But is this a pertinent point? This story is about conflict, repression, independence and dependence, action and inaction, yet despite all this there is never a feeling of any character – least of all Tangy Mae – having escaped their difficulties emotionally, intellectually, or otherwise. The scope of a human story such as this, unfolding against a hostile historical backdrop, requires greater character development than simply branding each one with irreparable frailties of body and mind. Beating the reader over the head with its brutality is not enough to elicit the sense of liberation this novel appears to strive for.

Robert Woodard - Heaping Stones.

2006-03-01T14:35:00.000Z

Heaping Stones - Robert Woodard
Burning Shore Press, 2005

Rating:****

Heaping Stones is the first release from Long Beach publishing house Burning Shore Press, and as a statement of intent it couldn’t be much stronger. On one level this is the story of the author, (anti) hero in his own book adrift in a world of booze, lost loves and mundane work. Woodard’s brand of California existentialism is nowhere near as dry and academic as the term sounds – Heaping Stones is a dizzying onslaught of drunken philosophizing, frenzied sex and literary discussion, all served with a healthy dose of angst and inner turmoil. In short it’s a uniquely brilliant and exciting book.

The book is also the story of 3 women: Maggie - whose very absence becomes integral to the story, Veronica - who makes herself a stage upon which writer can act out his own feelings of self-loathing, and Rachael - the young artist who is placed into the role of savior. The sex – and there’s plenty of it – is rendered with an enthusiasm and lust that pervades all aspects of the work: one moment, the cunt of one girl is lovingly described, pubic hair by pubic hair almost, and just as quickly the attention can turn to a dissection of Hamsun's The Ring is Closed without losing pace. The thing that jumps off the page is the author’s own wonderment at the fundamentals of life: women, art and intoxicants (here, cold beer). There’s something of Kerouac’s wild-eyed embracing of beatitude in Woodard’s prose, as well as the lustful degeneracy of Bukowski.

Writing is the central theme here, and most of the pain in the book stems from the pain of creation itself: the struggle to remain true to oneself in a society geared towards crushing the fight and the originality out of all of us. As Woodard’s hero wrestles with his own writing we slowly realize that the real poetry being put down is right here, on the page.
You find yourself caught up in the pace of it all as sentences start to fly past you and (during one section in particular) traditional punctuation is thrown out of the window altogether in the rush to sing-scream a thousand emotions all at once, a nine page single sentence chapter breathlessly concludes “I might just deserve to be alive after all”

As you can see, this book is more complex than it might at first seem. Woodard has started with the conceits of a more traditional roman a clef and produced something very different, something which borders on prose poetry at times but which is, at heart, a self-portrait. Unlike most writers who have attempted such a thing, Woodard offers us a very human portrayal, with the blood, shit, sweat and imperfections not only included, but held up to the light and examined with glee. The unflinching honesty of the writing put me in mind of Henry Miller at times.

The next book on Burning Shore Press will be Dan Fante’s play Don Giovanni and with books like this on their roster it’s hard not to feel definite excitement about what the future holds for this radical new publishing house.

Tony O'Neill © 2006.

Nick McDonell - The Third Brother.

2006-01-17T10:05:00.000Z

Nick McDonell - The Third Brother.

***

Family values...

With Twelve, the then seventeen year-old debut author Nick McDonell became an overnight publishing sensation, with familial connections to the likes of Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion lending their weight to dust-jacket hype. Twelve not only revelled in the excesses of stimulant fiction but laid several generational markers along the way, somewhat justifying the hype. Critics had a veritable field day portraying McDonell as, inter alia, the Bret Easton Ellis/Jay McInerney/Hunter S. Thompson of his generation, though the abject lack of a Bratpack or gonzo milieu of his own was somewhat a hindrance in this department. Yet the fixtures and fittings remain constant throughout -- you can make your own checklist but it’s all here.

The Third Brother finds McDonell out of his precocious teens and a Harvard undergraduate. Unsurprisingly then, we find The Third Brother anchored in the terrain of his debut and a set of characters who McDonell could conceivably recognise from his own peer group. Structured in three parts, covering narrator Mike’s stint as an intern on a Hong Kong magazine and dispatch on a story in Thailand before returning to New York having made a perturbing discovery about his family history, 9/11 intervenes to provide the book with its raison d’etre. Mike’s time in Bangkok, supposedly working on a feature about the government-sponsored crackdown on drugs tourism, is spent examining the social mores of the moneyed backpacker community (American and European) in the Thai capital, but the pretext is merely cover for his editor sending him to track down AWOL staffer, Dorr.

McDonell works in the explorations of class found in Twelve but never gets judgemental. As Mike’s girlfriend remarks to him in sanguine celebration at their existence, “We’re rich white kids at fancy schools.” To some extent, this is one of the worst examples of dialogue in the book, where the author leans too heavily on his characters to make a general point. His matter of fact and harrowing depiction of Dorr’s explanation as to why the concept of family has been rendered meaningless to him, having watched his own daughter mistakenly killed as an unwanted child, spares little. However, Dorr’s testimony, integral to the story, is rushed and takes second place to some minor incidents.

There is a case to answer that The Third Brother is McDonell’s Ransom, Jay McInerney’s 1985 sophomore effort which also saw explorations of familial dysfunction, drugged-up ex-pats and an Asian setting. Yet McDonell has avoided the didactic and anecdotal excesses of McInerney’s cathartic account of Japan and has instead allowed the backdrop to take a lesser role in embellishing the storyline, though thus far it is Ransom that is the critically-acclaimed of the two. This notwithstanding, both novels employ an almost identical narrative approach and voice and for anyone familiar with it, the main body of the book the parallels are somewhat striking and possibly wearing. McDonell’s style is however restrained and measured for each moment depicted; there is no showboating or desire to get experimental on us. Of course, while both books share climatic denouements, McDonell has edged out into geopolitics and its impact on the urban environment. At least it’s not Alex Garland.

In an elegiac essay for The Guardian Review recently, Christopher Hitchens sought to draw a line under the idea of journalists as fiction, arguing that all that remains is a bygone age now rendered entirely obsolete by the rise of the internet and a more domesticated press pack. The likelihood of the blogger as a central character remains too risible to countenance at present, though Hitchens does predict its advent, but the decadent Asia of Thai fleshpots and drug-fuelled backpackers as the setting for the newshound novel lends a plausible vigour as a modern setting. While McDonell is no Evelyn Waugh in these matters, he does make a compelling case for inclusion among the more accomplished recent examples of journo fiction.

Having built up a major examination of his family’s dysfunction, typified by Dorr’s revelations, one of which leads to the perturbing discovery of the sibling referred to in the title, the 9/11 segment is unfortunately disjointed within the narrative and at odds with it. The Third Brother is more mood music for the 9/11 generation than a pitch-perfect thought out philosophical tract masquerading as a novel. But given that’s not what anyone asked for, we’re not in any position to complain. As such, The Third Brother does act as what could possibly show McDonell to actually be that significant writer of his generation. As commentary on 9/11 goes though, it’s better thought of as a novel in its own right, shorn of any pretence in that department. If you allow yourself to keep this at the front of your mind then the book works as a satisfying progression in McDonnell’s career path as a writer and as a document of the nihilistic excess and imbalances among wasted youth in Thailand.

A. Stevens © 2006.

Andrew Stevens is a former Editor of 3:AM Magazine. He lives in London and Sao Paulo, where he works as a writer and researcher on various projects.

Alan Esser - The Impossible History of Grimalky Quickens: Modern Man.

2005-11-01T16:39:00.000Z

Alan Esser - The Impossible History of Grimalky Quickens: Modern Man.

***

This is probably one of the oddest books I have read all year. Odd doesn't necessarily mean bad, but odd it definitely is. It's also weird. Eccentric. Quirky. Impossible, even.

Grimalky Quickens is a recent graduate, starting out on a new career working for Badgers Group in the city of Gloria. Gloria, both capital city and name of country, is an extraordinary place. Whilst never confirmed (the vague geographical placing of Gloria is indicative of the book as a whole - details don't seen to matter), Gloria seems to be an island, which, along with seven thousand other islands, makes up an archipelago. A rather nasty political character called Mubaba is trying to exert his power to take over all the islands within the archipelago and rule them under his own flag (see page 51). Gloria has somehow escaped Mubaba and is some sort of independent state, and now the other islands want to follow suit, and are fighting Mubaba for their own independence. I was somewhat intrigued by this Mubaba character, and these seemingly fictional islands. A little research shows that a General Mubaba is in fact a 'real life' character, featuring in...wait for it...a Nintendo Game Boy called Desert Strike. This might of course be coincidental, but sometimes, I like to think coincidences just don't exist. I might even write to Alan Esser to ask him whether this is all true. It's a too fantastic and rather original way, I think, to infiltrate modern culture into a work of fiction.

Anyway, I digress. Gloria is every city and no city at all that has ever existed, all at the same time. The city contains a Botanical Gardens, a Winter and a Summer palace, a Pantheon Square, a financial district (the Exchange), an Old Town, and a Downtown - it is every capital city in the world rolled into one. Its outlying towns are similarly strange. Grimalky's parents live in Bantam Town in Quickens Cottage which is surrounded by green space and trees and flowers and a white picket fence. Grimalky and his Dad drink in the Toad and Crow pub. Everything about Bantam Town is so British - Mr Quickens is even a master baker. Indeed, at the opening of the book, we meet Grim, and his friends Chip and Trawg, watching horse racing on a television, and drinking flat beer in a pub called the Deer's Head. Esser himself refers to them as 'pubs'. All throughout this book, Gloria seems to display, sometimes in small ways, and sometimes in big ways, the defining and stereotypical features of various nations - the US, Britain, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore etc. Esser presents little microcosms of ways of life, and presents them in this city called Gloria, which could be anywhere in the world, or somewhere very particular in the world, depending on which way you want to look at it.

Gloria is a moneyed city, whether because of or in spite of its independent state. Badgers Group is one of the financial pinnacles of the city. Everyone knows about Badgers Group, whether it be Giovanni Raffles, the marvellously camp hairdresser, or the waiters in Strumples restaurant. If you work for Badgers, you are someone to be both revered and feared in Gloria, that seems certain. Badgers Group, then, is the natural home for Grim Quickens. Grim is a boy with big ambitions. Grim wants to run before he can walk. Grim wants promotion before he has even started the job. So one Monday morning, he starts out as An Official Adjunct to the Assistant Underling in Charge of Administrative and Extraneous Affairs. We all see the ridiculousness of this job title, but sadly, Grim doesn't. Expecting a huge office with a big desk in a light filled room, Grim is horrified, to say the least, when his office turns out to be nothing more than the broom cupboard. Stuck working for the frightening Mrs Itchinson, Grim spends much of his time involved with menial tasks which take him to the old fashioned print room to make endless photocopies, or to the pay phone on the street outside his office, making work calls. He doesn't have a telephone in his office. He doesn't think to ask for one.

Grim is desperate to succeed, and in the end, it is this desperation which drives him and which ultimately forges his downfall. When it becomes clear that Grim is the only person who thinks he deserves more within Badgers Group, he begins to plot blackmail in order to get what he wants. He creates files for the major players in Badgers, and attempts to get ahead within the group that way. He eavesdrops at every occasion (in the toilet, in the restroom etc) in order to get any information which might prove beneficial to his climb up the corporate ladder, and infiltrates private and confidential information about those he wishes to 'expose'. The critical moment comes when he finds that Mr Dibbles, one of the major bigwigs in the company, has a foot fetish, and visits a prostitute often to satisfy this need. On a company outing to the beach, he tries to test out this fetish by 'attending' to his girlfriend Irene's feet in front of Dibbles and his wife. Grim's desperate need to succeed comes to a head at this juncture, and he snaps, right in front of all his colleagues and Irene, has a big shouting fit, and is subsequently sent to a mental institution for assessment (in order to keep his job within Badgers Group), having to stay overnight, and endure the company of his fellow sufferers.

Grim, at the beginning of this tale, is a fairly unremarkable chap. Yes, he wants to succeed in his job, but his ambition has a boyish charm about it. He plans and plots how he is going to do this with precision, but the reality of his job with the Badgers Group begins to show him the mundane nature of office life for a junior. Grim suffers because he lives his life through the reality in his head, not the reality of the actual situation he is in. He wants a life he doesn't have, but seems to pretend that he has it anyway. The three women in his life- Doris Tiffle, Penny Scroggins, and Irene Pettifer, eat up his time and non-existent money (he lives mostly on credit) and yet none of them seem to make him happy, and they seem to hamper his rise to corporate fame. I could have liked Grim, had he lived his life differently, but his ambition makes him almost like a raving lunatic, a man who is agitated, unsettled, clawing his way to where he wants to at any cost. Most of all, I dislike the sense of desperation that surrounds him. In the end, it makes me pity him. In fact, the ending of this novel shows the extent of Grim's desperation. Having had a rather confusing conversation with Dibbles, head honcho of Badgers Group, in which Dibbles seems to be aware of Grim having found out about his visits to prostitutes, Dibbles and Grim seem to reach some kind of agreement (it really isn't very clear) in which Grim is kept on in spite of his recent show of mental instability. Grim really believes that he has made it, will be Dibble's confidant and right hand man. His desperate struggle has borne fruits, he has succeeded. Clearly euphoric, he tries finally to conquer the heart of Emily, daughter of Dibbles. However, much like his desperation for a career landed him in a mental institution, so too does his desperation to win Emily's heart lead him to bad places - Emily declares rape at the end of the novel.

Esser has certainly concocted an interesting story - Gloria, the epitome of everything that is good and bad about the world today; Grim, who stands for everyman's experience within the corporate world - a life which is essentially mundane and plodding towards some unknown great and good, if that even exists, and at what price anyway. Esser's writing is neither very good nor very bad. He shows great humour in places, and an obvious astuteness for human nature, and what we will do to fulfil our desires, whatever they may be. I wanted to keep reading this novel, to find out what happens to Grim, despite the verboseness of Esser's writing, and the somewhat lack of plot, and anything very exciting really happening. There is perhaps, though, something of the morality tale in this novel - what does getting exactly what you want mean in reality? Can you ever have exactly what you want or will something always be sacrificed, or suffer as a result of one single ambition? The title of this book 'The Impossible History' gives us a sense that we shouldn't believe anything we are told in this book, and its idiosyncrasies support the idea of a fabricated life and a fabricated world. Perhaps Esser is trying to tell us that there is a crevice into which we can all fall, and it exists in the space between the reality of our actual life, and a life which exists only in our head. Grim keeps falling into this crevice, right from the start of the novel, right up until the end, and maybe he is a warning to us all.

I admire the quirkiness of this book, but am not surprised that it has been self-published. There is something of the raw and uncrafted about it, but I somehow like it for this. I feel fondly towards it because of this. It isn't always easy to read - Esser is a verbose writer and sometimes the lack of clarity with plot and character and sense of place and time can be frustrating. By self-publishing, Esser is telling us what he wants to tell us, exactly how he wants to tell it.

Self-publishing has been a way for him to share his writing, a writing which hasn't gone through the sieving process of agents, editors, and developmental work. Of course, it provokes all the usual questions and responses surrounding self-publishing versus big house publishing - what is worthy writing, who decides this, and does mass appeal always mean a novel is well crafted. For my part, I am glad I met Grim, and got a peek into his warped world. I learnt something from him, and for this reason alone, I am glad Esser has shared his work with a wider audience.

Louise Wise © 2005.

Kat Pomfret - Paradise Jazz

2005-09-13T18:28:00.000+01:00

Kat Pomfret - Paradise Jazz.

****

In the opening pages of Kat Pomfret's Paradise Jazz [snowbooks], Georgetown Easy says:

"My growing up was poetic; the kind that everybody likes to read about but nobody wants to have…Mom knitting a past, me trying to find the end of wool to unravel the whole concern…there was history, there was subtext, it spoke volumes."

And so the novel’s agenda is set – to unravel the complexities of family history, to separate truth from lies, to search for what is missing and to find what has been lost. In Paradise Jazz, characters become the lost and the found, both the searchers and the searched.

Set in an anonymous suburban town, Paradise Jazz is narrated by best friends Georgetown Easy and Helena Jones. I won’t list all the things which link the girls - how they are similar, how they are different or how their lives intertwine - because the most important thing about Georgetown and Helena is that they are both looking for something. Both of their lives are imbued with a sense of the unknown, and it is this invisible force they both chase. However, it isn’t just Georgetown and Helena who are searching. Paradise Jazz is all about lost things – people, memories, pasts and futures. It is about the expectation of what finding these lost things will bring, and the true impact the reality of discovery has.

Georgetown says: "my world is a shrunken world", and she isn’t the only one for whom this is true. Paradise Jazz is full of shrunken worlds, whether it is the small town in which the novel is set, the tight knit community in which Georgetown exists, or Paradise Jazz itself, the blues club which the book is named after. This idea of a shrunken world is pivotal in the novel, because it both defines the lives of those who exist within it, and provides the bounds from which they want to escape.

Georgetown and Helena exist within tiny family units, with more people missing than are present. (Georgetown has her mum Agatha, Aunt Tantie (Agatha’s sister Mary) and Tantie’s husband Jimmy, whilst Helena’s family is Troy, her twin brother, and mad Aunt Gelda, also known as Gag). Both also want to make their lives bigger, and the only way they see to do this is to find what they perceive as "missing". Yet ironically, in Paradise Jazz, no one actually lives a shrunken life. In spite of the sense of absence surrounding Helena and Georgetown, they are both strong young women who have extraordinary lives in many ways – Georgetown raised by a single parent in the US and England, but also with a strong sense of African culture instilled in her by her mother and aunt, and Helena, caring for dying parents as a teenager and then continuing to look after her brother and aunt. I like that Pomfret has managed to create characters that have true dimension – we can see them from the outside, but empathise with how they see themselves too. This novel bursts with secrets, with people either running forwards, away from the past, or trying to run backwards towards it, hoping to find something they are desperately seeking and cannot find in their present.

Whilst the themes of Paradise Jazz are not highly original, they do reflect some of the fundamental intricacies and complexities of human existence – the ideas of the self, identity, and belonging. Georgetown’s absent father is one of the foci of her search, the other being her need for a sense of understanding of her family’s history (her mother and aunt, and her grandparents). Her physical searching, though, is about bigger things. Georgetown cannot use her own reality to forge an identity and sense of belonging– her mother’s love, the family unit she exists in, or her relationship with Helena. Rather, part of her believes that until she finds her father, then that which is missing will always have dominance and prevent her from feeling a true sense of her own self. Within Georgetown, her mother’s half must be reconciled with her father’s half in order to make her complete. Throughout the course of the novel, family secrets are revealed, and a truth emerges.

Similarly, Helena is searching not for an absent parent to complete her sense of self , even though both parents are now missing from her life, rather, she is trying to find the girl that she would have been without the experiences of caring for her parents as they were dying, and ultimately, without their deaths. In her own words:

"I’d have been a different girl, one who didn’t live on tiptoe".

She is searching for some sense to life after the loss of her parents, and much like Georgetown, believes this lies outside the bounds of her own reality – with Jack Morea, a philosopher and author of The Theory of Soul written in the 1970s. Helena believes this book to contain the truth about life, but when she meets Jack, she finds out that he doesn’t really remember, or believe anymore, his own ideologies in the book, let alone hold them to be truths. He says:

"Truth? Lies? The world’s not that simple. The truth is what happens when everybody’s delusions coincide. My truth, your truth, these are only ever working hypotheses."

Pomfret raises the interesting question about just what the truth means, and whether the consequences of the truth are those that are expected. There is a sense early on in Paradise Jazz that "the truth", in whatever way it manifests itself, will somehow enable Georgetown and Helena to reconcile themselves with who they really are, and discover that which they are searching for. But does it really do this in the novel, and does it ever really happen like this at all. For Georgetown, the truth could be said to make little difference because in the end, her everyday life is no different – she is still fatherless and still surrounded and loved by the people who have always been there for her. The realisation of the horrors associated with her grandfather can similarly change little for her in reality. Yes, she can now attribute her mother’s and aunt’s behaviour with each other to something more tangible, but her mother and aunt will still behave in the same way and have the same relationship. Helena suffers equal disappointment at the hands of Jack Morea. She thinks his truth is the truth she has been looking for, but that is all it turns out to be – his truth and version of events. Perhaps it is simply in the knowing of a truth which makes a slight shift occur, even if that truth cannot change much in reality. Maybe knowing leads to more of an understanding, and this understanding to some sense of peace of mind and acceptance. For Georgetown and Helena, the truths they are eventually faced with change everything and change nothing. Ultimately, they must decide whose version of the truth they use as the basis on which to cement their sense of self and identity. I think in the end, both realise that they must create their own version of the truth to survive.

Pomfret is undoubtedly a talented writer. She has a great ability to create strong narrative voices, and I admire this very much. Georgetown’s is especially distinctive. Not surprisingly, given the focus Pomfret places on music throughout the book, Georgetown’s voice is full lyricism, and has a tone and rhythm of its own. I very much like the way in which Pomfret ends the book with Georgetown singing – it is as if her spoken voice has metamorphosed into its rightful entity – a song. Pomfret’s two main characters also narrate their own stories, and this lends an authenticity to what they are saying and makes me feel closer and more involved with each of them. I like that there is no third person narrator between me and the character, and that there is less distance to reach their realities. Aurelie Morea (daughter of Jack Morea) is a ghostly figure from the past who arrives at Paradise Jazz to stir up old feelings for Georgetown and her family. She provides a third narrative voice in the book, and it is in these sections that we see the extent of Pomfret’s poeticism. Aurelie mesmerises audiences at the Paradise Jazz club with her voice, and seduces its owner, Sanderson Miller, with her singing, as well as members of the club band who play with her. Pomfret allows Aurelie a voice which is a mixture between poetry and prose, full of imagery and hidden meaning. There is a real beauty to these parts of the novel, and it is almost as if Aurelie is singing us the story of her life, rather than telling us. Pomfret successfully presents three really distinct voices for the main characters in the book, and in this her debut novel, manages to show good restraint with both plot and writing style. The novel has a solid and tight narrative structure, with a good sense of timing and flow.

I like lots of things about Paradise Jazz – the way it offers a snapshot of a particular time in a group of people’s lives, how it contains enough history to ground the characters and plot, but still retains a sense of the fleeting, and how it explores fundamental themes of existence which everyone can relate to in some way (self, identity, belonging, truth, and how individuals have the power to create these for themselves). Most importantly, Pomfret’s writing is delightful to read – she has definitely mastered the craft of how to use words well. In the novel, Jack Morea says:

"There’s something in the coming and going".

The lives of Georgetown and Helena don’t change dramatically in the course of Paradise Jazz, but something shifts for both of them so that they can begin to move away from situations they no longer wish to be in and which have made them feel incomplete. They have both "come and gone" throughout the novel, and both end up somehow better for their journeys.

Louise Wise © 2005.

Debra Hamel - Trying Neaira

2005-08-19T00:17:00.000+01:00

Debra Hamel - Trying Neaira

****

Debra Hamel’s "Trying Neaira: the True Story of a Courtesan’s Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece" (Yale University Press, 2003) is an intriguing insight into the life of a woman in 4th century BC, from Corinthian brothel to sex slave through to a relatively harmonious life (minus the court cases) with her long term partner Stephanos of Athens. When your life story can be encapsulated into such a sentence it deserves to be retold to future generations and it is thanks to Hamel’s rigorous analysis of the few available sources that we have access to Neaira (pronounced “neh-EYE-ruh”) and her story. Unfortunately the closest we get to Neaira is through the speeches of others and despite being the centre of both the book and the court case that inspired it she has no voice. This is perhaps inevitable as women were not able to speak in court and respectable Greek women were meant to be kept hidden away from all except male relatives and consequently they are also hidden from historians. The information on Neiara’s life is provided by the speech of the prosecution, an Athenian by the name of Apollodoros the man behind the litigation against Neaira and involved in a lengthy feud with Stephanos. Hamel works through the spin (the speech possesses it in abundance) and picks through the dirt aimed at Neaira and her former life in an attempts to reach the truth. However, rather than being the focus of Hamel’s work Neaira, her trial and the other players involved are used as a springboard into Athenian society and its legal, political and social systems.

The first chapter of Trying Neaira deals with place and time, following Neaira within her working life as a courtesan and introduces the reader to the prevalence of prostitution and its various guises in ancient Greece. The legality and social acceptance of prostitution in ancient Greece seems incongruous to the modern reader when juxtaposed with the limited freedom extended to free female Athenians. Yet, if wishing to learn more about women in this society this acceptance and openness has yielded numerous sources which provided important access to a part of society where women were central figures. Although Hamel is seeking to tell Neaira’s story the emphasis is on the society she existed in and the details we are given are more generic than specific. This is an unavoidable limitation given the available sources but the reader is amply compensated with details of a prostitutes daily life. Who can help but be intrigued by the knowledge that some working girls wore "studs affixed to the soles of their sandals (which) spelled out erotic messages" (Pg. 5) in the sand encouraging men to follow them to more private locations?

In the proceeding chapters Hamel deals with the numerous litigation preceding Neaira’s trial; the amount of which would suggest that both Stephanos and Apollodoros were never far from court. The political manoeuvring and court activity of the men in Neaira’s life is intriguing and the use of Stephanus’ daughter Phanus as a pawn to initiate yet more lawsuits is richly and concisely conveyed. Once again the reader is treated to juicy titbits concerning the seamier side of Athens's courts and the Athenians use for radishes is to be wondered at. The amount of information Hamel packs into this book is testament to her concise prose style and superior knowledge of ancient Greek society and the reader will finish this book amazed at the amount of knowledge they have absorbed.

The triumphs of Debra Hamel’s Trying Neaira are many but, arguably, the most significant is the use of Neaira’s eventful life to embark on an accessible but still comprehensive analysis of Athenian society and its legal system. For those with knowledge of ancient Greece Trying Neaira can only enhance their understanding of Athens legal and social systems. However, perhaps more importantly, Hamel succeeds in producing a work that must surely spark the interest of any newcomer to the subject causing them to delve further into this fascinating society and the position women occupied within it.

Gina Evans © 2005.

Lisa Williams - Letters to Virginia Woolf

2005-08-03T23:11:00.000+01:00

Lisa Williams -Letters to Virginia Woolf

*****

Every once in a while a book comes your way, almost as if from out of the ether, that moves you to such an extent it forces you, at all costs, to make other people read it too. Lisa Williams's Letters to Virginia Woolf [Hamilton Books] seems to be one of those books. There is usually a formula to these books: they are normally simple in construct, speak clearly and concisely to the reader - they are never overtly literary or self-congratulatory. Yet all touch something inside us, they somehow speak universally, they are magical; you know the type of book I'm talking about. Most are fables, or uniquely allegorical in style, some, like Lisa Williams’s Letters to Virginia Woolf, are epistolary in their design and uniquely human in their voice.

Part personal memoir, part meditation on Woolf's own pacifist philosophy, Williams attempts to transfer these meanings into a wider, contemporary epoch [she succeeds, not that such themes lose much punch over the years]. In succeeding in this pursuit Williams also manages to keep the book personal, relating current events and the themes covered by Woolf, in her life, to her own life experience; foremost of these is the birth of Williams’s own child. Letters to Virginia Woolf juxtaposes the image of one woman's struggle to create life, Woolf's struggle to prolong life, with those who want to destroy it - drawing largely from the 9/11 attacks in New York. Yet, what makes this an extraordinary book is Williams's knack of universal communication without literary obfuscation. Let's face it; this is a hard task when dealing with such subjects. Letters to Virginia Woolf is chopped up into short letters, vignettes, page breaks, and quotes - for such depth of subject Williams manages to convey all she needs to in just 78 extremely short pages [some containing barely a paragraph of text if that].

When reading Letters to Virginia Woolf one is taken by the hand and led agog into the world of two women, one real and the other now mythologized into a meaning to cling on to. Each of the six parts, containing the personal letters addressed to Woolf, acts as a porthole into that other world of the imagination, the world of hope and coming to terms with our beastly nature, the world of wanting, demanding that final answer. Each letter is mesmerizing in its brevity and frankness - there's no time for literary allusion here, just a lyrical, poetic beauty that speaks directly from the page. Williams writes about her childhood, family and war, interlinking each theme with fluidity and ease. Williams addresses these issues in response to the personal effect Virginia Woolf's own words have had on her - an acquiescence of sorts, a sisterly homage to the philosophy of pacifism and a two-fingered salute to the grandiloquent philosophy of war and the misery it creates.

It is interesting that Williams equates pacifism with womanhood [and why shouldn't she?] - Woolf's words are seen as universal words, but at their core lies an intrinsic understanding, on Williams’s part, of the pains suffered to help create life:

"I was convinced that the first miscarriage was a lark, a fatal mistake, so many women have one. The doctors told me it would never happen again to me. After the doctor removed the placenta and the remains of the dead embryo, I felt completely emptied out. It was as if winter had arrived early. The barren branches of trees were dying inside me, and the soil around me was dry, longing for water" [Pg 13]

Letters to Virginia Woolf remains as intensely curt, lyrical and poetic throughout. Subtle imagery is used to convey this barren wasteland of infertility, but there is nothing on show here, this is not a contrivance - we instantly feel the barren, deathly battleground, the leaves stripped bare after each detonation, the smouldering embers of Ground Zero, one woman's struggle to create life amongst all this bitter turmoil. A cruel kismet created by our own hands. And so it is Williams's unique, honest prose-style that encapsulates all and confines the reader's imagination - it is simply hypnotic in its frankness.

Williams even intersperses poems into her letters without much of a shift in pace and feeling. Soft, welcome lyrical lulls that appease the reader after each shocking admission. For instance:

"You must be/covered now/ by moon light,/and sleeping,/sleeping so peacefully/in starlight/sleeping/in a place where the dead/wait patiently/to become what is alive/once again” [Pg 23]

This is a Godless vision, yet it is one of hope, everlasting hope, that things may be reborn, but there is also a remote cynicism at hand, a simple knowing that nothing can be changed, everything is fixed - the world around us made up, a vast canvass filled by only us, our vanities and cruelties, the only inevitable outcome determined by us. Williams begins to paint a picture of a world that knows nothing but war and destruction:

"I understand now that as children we are transparent, but as we grow we inherit the violent history of the earth...And then, of course, there is the sorrow 'brewed by the earth', the sorrow of all those lives lost in the many phases and manifestations of war." [Pg 76]

And this, of course, is true. And we know it. Above all this, though, is Williams's recognition that Woolf was first and foremost a woman and a writer and thinker second. I feel it is this basic fact that is the crux to both writers beliefs. Letters to Virginia Woolf is worth owning for its simple, lyrical beauty alone, but also for its understanding of Woolf's inner machinations, the pivotal beliefs which, in the end, drove her to despair. Williams uses her past to reveal more about the present that most historical tomes I have read, the way she delicately unpeels certain events in her own life help to, somehow, make some sense of the destruction we see around us.

Just like Woolf's own 'angel in the house' Williams exorcises the ghosts of her own past to help forge a clearer present.

In this form of exorcism Williams leaves no stone unturned, she effortlessly strides the complexities of divorce, adolescence, childbirth, miscarriage, death, destruction, terrorism and war in a concise, unsentimental approach. It is quite a feat for Lisa Williams who, with the very make-up of Letters to Virginia Woolf, has all the trappings to be an overly sentimental, gushy writer, literally sopping wet, drenched in flowery prose, wilfully tugging on the heartstrings of a wounded nation - but she most certainly is not syrupy and corny. Let's get this straight. Letters to Virginia Woolf can not be as diametrically opposed to the above statement if it wanted to be. It is as far removed from the current gush we have come to know and expect in recent years. Williams's terse, honest and sharp voice does not allow such solipsistic jabbering and the whole book remains universally precise because of this. Letters to Virginia Woolf speaks the language of the everyday, the ordinary and, rather ironically, is an extraordinary book because of it. Read something different.

Lee Rourke (c) 2005

Ellis Sharp – Unbelievable Things

2005-07-12T22:36:00.000+01:00

Ellis Sharp - Unbelievable Things.

*****

Someone once said to me, upon finishing Ellis Sharp’s Unbelievable Things, that it is rather like a singular traditional story told by a multitude of competing voices and idioms, some real and some fictional, all stretching and distorting the narrative in their peculiar telling – imagine, for instance, Jane Austin lying in a large unmade bed with Tolstoy; the two of them seriously blocked with amphetamines, having various breakdowns, while downing their fourth bottle of red. As farfetched and hyperbolic as all this may seem the above description is actually, after reading this extraordinary book myself, quite true to form – only I would take it a step further: imagine, if you will, the same surreal scene on the bed only it being suddenly gate-crashed by William S. Burroughs, Laurence Sterne and B. S. Johnson and various fanatical film aficionados of every description, all carrying their own stash of heavy intoxicants, dribbling, yakking, jabbering, pouring out their thoughts, all at once, in a cacophony of literary and linguistic brilliance. You see, then, and only then may one begin to realise the grand landscape Ellis Sharp has created within Unbelievable Things.

It has to be said, again and again, that Ellis Sharp writes fiction unlike any other writer I have encountered to date. Quite a bold statement in itself, but I can assure you, just like Blaise Cendrars before him, reading Ellis Sharp is like stepping into another universe – and it’s rather ironical that it takes this gargantuan sidestep away from current literary form for Sharp to begin to tell us most about ourselves. Surely this is the fundamental purpose of literature? And if this is the case then it seems Ellis Sharp has what it takes. You see, it’s impossible to walk away from any of Sharp’s fictions having not learnt anything about the world in which we live. Yet, still, his novels and short story collections are seriously askew whilst still maintaining, and here lies Sharp’s strength as a novelist, this driving current, this maddening stream which threads the blips and malfunctions of our present together with that of the past, and the future, to form a crystallised narrative; in short, his books are jam-packed with wondrous things.

So what’s it about? Well, owing to Unbelievable Things’ gargantuan scope and a fear of losing oneself in each of its minute particulars, it is better I refer to the blurb on this occasion:

“When the old man died, Dr Brunner found in Gallagher’s room five boxes of manuscripts. They told the story of the Gorst family and their rambling house in southern England, and how Gallagher had fallen in love with Monika Gorst. But there was something odd about this story and the way it was told. And then Brunner died and the story went on without him – which did not seem to bother Bezerides, who once said that he was not from earth.

Moving between The Clock House and a psychiatric institution, the western front and the Bolshevik Revolution, this postmodern story may be the first to rewrite the English country house novel and the history of the twentieth century from the perspective of Alpha Centauri.” [Blurb, Unbelievable Things]

The core functionality of Unbelievable Things is that of a conventional realist narrative being slowly teased, slowly split asunder as it is mercilessly subjected to the strong-willed gravitational force of the post-modern. The old narrative is yanked and finally relents as it is tugged away from its rather conventional, some would say staid, foundations towards a futuristic, and utterly irrational, bitterly anarchic new form. Sharp takes great pleasure in pulling the rug from under the reader. Whole Passages in Unbelievable Things, in spite of this, are often laugh-out-loud-funny, yet the narrative, regardless of the Sharpesque pitfalls which constantly threaten its very existence, still manages to sustain its ruthless, acerbic and ultimately telling edge.

Unbelievable Things is split into five parts, part one ‘From Another Planet’ being the most difficult segment in the whole book. It’s a kind of reverse Far From the Madding Crowd in which the usual earthly ponderings of the sky above are turned inside out and we see the earth perceived from another planet. It makes for a confusing, yet interesting, start. Almost immediately we start to see glimpses of the breakdown in the novel. The first paragraph, while starting with all the eminent confidence of an ordinary third-person social-realist narrative, buoyed, quite naturally, by its unforced omniscient charm, soon begins to suffer a nervous breakdown of sorts, a porthole of what is yet to happen, as the structure begins to stammer and spit, staggering to the end. Sentence structure is broken but still readable, for example:

“Wonders he, the doctor, recalling, total.” [Pg 9]

This sentence appears on the very first page and is a sign of things to come. Upon first reading it can seem pointless [this is the third paragraph of a book 539 pages in length], but taken in the right context makes complete and utter sense. We also see buried within the same sentence a reference to the film Total Recall [an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story] – the first of many film and sci-fi allusions and references which Sharp purposely juxtaposes with the country house setting of the book. These shifts in narrative and breakdowns in structure forge the underlying image of an unstable narrative voice jostling for attention within the main structure. The polyphonic nature of Unbelievable Things is in tune with the Skaz of Russian post-modernist’s such as Victor Erofeyev. Skaz is an upturned recycling of separate eras, mixing classic literature with modern satire, producing an aerated medley of current pot-boilers with their idiosyncrasies, vernacular and argot and the classical Russian canon with its seriousness, meaning and standing. In the very same way Sharp mixes current styles with British tradition to form his own prose-styling and structure – half parody, half disparagement and in the true essence of Skaz Sharp develops something refreshingly tangible and innovative from this. All this adds to the timbre of the voices, especially the intruder who buts into the narrative at fleeting intervals within the text, at first it is hard to decipher whose voice this is, but it soon becomes clear that it is in fact Gallagher [although this is a quite difficult task as his identity oddly changes throughout the entire book, this is a classic Sharp prank; sometimes he is addressed as Charlie Bunch and other he is the mysterious Bezerides]. Gallagher is the key character, the lynchpin which holds most of Unbelievable Things together plot-wise. Although, it has to be said, nothing is revealed too overtly by Sharp. The first chapter soon pulls itself together, only after names and spellings of characters begin to change. Font size begins to change shape and size, lower case and upper begin to infiltrate whole sentences – something is happening, something is disturbing the narrative. An outside force maybe?

In this crucial first chapter earth is seen from afar, we are being scrutinized – this is exemplified by a narrative structure which is openly prodded and poked before finally succumbing to such scrutiny. This unworldly interference has a point all the same. Juxtapose this irrational interference with the staid descriptions of the Hampshire landscape known to Jane Austen and we have before our very eyes all the raw ingredients for honest, literary tomfoolery and satire – something Sharp exudes with glee. The slips, slurs and general unease in this opening chapter turn out to play a primary undertaking in the events towards the close of the book, and as I have subsequently mentioned, everything is happening for a reason. Running through the entire narrative of Unbelievable Things is the prolonged metaphor of a landslide and coupled with this linguistic breakdown, serves as a platform for Sharp’s deconstruction of his novel. Unbelievable Things is put under a strong microscope. Sharp doesn’t want to see a stationary narrative, he wants it to evolve, to split and divide like a cell; he wants the whole structure to flit, to move along, to be pushed and shoved by the same unrecognizable forces that govern us all. And these forces aren’t godly, no way, they are swayed by our very own curiosity, our very own tampering in the machinations of everything that makes us tick, from the thoughts we hold to the actions we take. This force, one presumes, manifests itself as the unidentified narrator who pokes in his nose, sticking it merrily into the gnarled face of authoritative traditions, those of the social realist narrative – the form in which amuses Sharp the most. It is obvious to all his readers that Ellis Sharp loves to mock this aging traditional form, seeing such realist foundations as nothing but an aged, limping stick-in-the-mud which hampers, as Sharp sees it, the progress of language and form in the British novel.

In using a faithful and believable landscape which, in turn, serves as an allusion to the literary landscape of traditional formalists such as Jane Austen and, to a lesser degree, Edward Thomas we are brought to the actual landslide at the end of the novel which puts an end to everything once and for all. Like the mud and slurry violently sliding from a hillside in its entirety Unbelievable Things gradually slips, as the novel’s traditional stanchions begin to give way – strange things begin to happen, such as characters disappearing, totally, from view, the only explanation given that they only existed in the “first draft” and are now not needed. Whole paragraphs of action are rendered meaningless because plot has shifted, changed and parts have been lost whilst saving onto disk in Sharp’s deconstructionist writing process. At one point in the narrative, with the temerity only the insouciant can muster, Ellis Sharp nips out for a cup of tea and to play records in the other room as characters go about their constructed business or sleep [when the characters are not alive on the page, then Sharp steps into view], the focus shifting over to Sharp and the nuts and bolts composition of Unbelievable Things, in fact Ellis Sharp is as much a central character as any of his protagonists are. All this plunges the narrative into political, post-modern and fictional disarray – and yet, somehow, Ellis Sharp forces this mishmash of ideas, style and waywardness to make perfect sense. Unbelievable Things, in spite of all this interference, is an easy read, the prose swift and direct, the whole metaphor believable and fitting.

Ellis Sharp’s prose-style suits his surname. It is barbed, slick and streamlined. Unbelievable Things blurs all preconceived notions of how novels should, in fact, look and read. Old fashioned structure is harangued by mainstream sci-fi imagery in films such as The Terminator [and as stated earlier Total Recall]. Yet again, Sharp mocks deep-rooted composition with conventional modern imagery drawn from popular culture; he cheapens social realism in this respect by showing literary elitists that their treasured literary cannon were once ostensibly a mainstream fiction.

The five parts of this extraordinary book [themselves literally found within the novel] cover a gargantuan literary range and political history. Part One [From Another Planet] comprehensively covers a time scale running from the mid-nineteenth century up to around 1914. Part Two [Century Plant] is set in the summer of 1914. Part Three [Zero Line] is set in France in the period from 28th August 1914 to 1916/1917. Part Four [Before Your Time] is set in Russia in the period spanning 1914 – 1941. Part 5 [Blood Star], apart from the first chapter, which takes place the day and night before, is set entirely on 8th September 1917 and returns to the provincial English landscape of Parts One and Two.

As a reader can probably tell Unbelievable Things is obsessed with time in the same way Sharp’s major influence, Laurence Sterne, was. There is also no shortage of intertextuality, including numerous literary allusions and jokes. For instance, the “cockerels” and “bulls” in the rural sequences directly allude to the final “Cock and Bull Story” in Sterne’s masterpiece Tristram Shandy. Likewise Sharp’s prose can often seem Joycean in its timbre and construct:

“Begin to fall, most in the first wave forward flat on their faces, a few arms in the conventional posture of a nine-reeler but some (many, oh many) in queer screaming terrible ways, bodies twirling, bodies twisted up, lungs punctured, bowels tumbling out like chipolatas, lips a pink froth, scores and scores of jerking galvanized men dancing a maddened eightsome reel their dance of.” [Pg 461]

This highly lyrical prose is also reminiscent of Wilfred Owen’s poetry; the same sake of man is being lamented as they fall into oblivion. Sharp drives the narrative into a paroxysm of Joycean and linguistic wonderment, as the voice snaps, the narrative and landscape slipping towards that final end:

“And. Then. They. Were. Facedown in an ocean of thyme, facedown on the slopes where the whitewhite helleborines are coming into. Bloom or. Was it just dust white dust and the massacre went on on on on on, the German guns hosing away wave after stupefied wave while.” [Pg 461]

The final chapters are exceedingly well written and the actual landslide, when it finally happens, is cut up into tiny cinematic snippets, placing the reader where the action lies with each character – with this we are hit from all sides as Sharp begins to quicken the narrative, each crafted paragraph feeling the almighty weight of this monstrous natural disaster. In these chapters we see much referencing to Malcolm Lowry – the postmodern narrative is about to prevail, pulling its prankster’s rug once and for all:

“Imagine next a stupefying scorching violetwhite flash, an allencompassing dreamlike flash accompanied by the suction of a hundred emptying bathtubs, a thousand squawking horns, the tortured squeal of recorded music played at the wrong speed, slowing down, low batteries twisting a great symphony, turning it into a mash of moans and blurry echoes, a place of desolation, cruelty, endings, where torn papers whirl with dreadful slowness in disintegrating rooms, chairs and cutlery madly circulate beneath cracking ceilings, while somewhere coldly distant dogs bark and klaxons screech. A roar, a sucking swishing roar there was, is.” [Pg 504]

This is the start of the landslide. These cinematic snippets, these short, sudden bursts of action and noise help with the overall quickening of pace. It is a narrative hook used by writers such as Nicholas Royle often within the gritty confines of an urban backdrop, but Sharp differs and is the more original because of it, using this same narrative device to drive and push along a traditional rustic, country-house setting, the result being as incongruous as it is compelling. The landslide is omniscient, nothing is left untouched and Sharp takes the reader from one scene of destruction to the next in the blink of an eye. It is a remarkable feat:

“A dozen mirrors simultaneously crack, slivers whirling across rooms like darts, embedding themselves in human faces and limbs. A half-decapitated girl drops, softly bubbling…” [Pg 517]

This is Sharp’s moment. I defy any reader to tell me that the above paragraphs are not mesmerizing writing at its best, at its most shining and lucid. And here lies the crux of Unbelievable Things as we begin to follow this almighty slab of wet earth as it trundles down the hillside towards total oblivion, within the menacing cacophony of natural violence and intent all begins to make everlasting sense. All Sharp’s slurs of diction and speech and narrative and font-size in the opening chapters begin to make complete and utter sense. We are back where we started and as in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake the beginning and the end of the novel join together, they become one and the same – a continuous recirculation. It is important to mention the passage and ultimate joining of time within Unbelievable Things. The whole book already exists [as it already does when porters Sikorski and Lee discover the box containing the five parts of the manuscript in the shoebox on page 83 – this “bloody rubbish”, in fact, being the five parts that make up Unbelievable Things] in manifold metafictional universes’ and even when the original manuscript, found by Sharp’s unknowing porters, is finally destroyed in a fire the book/narrative continues anyway, regardless, an organic form with a life, it seems, of its own. Unbelievable Things is beyond time.

In short, Unbelievable Things, if read naturalistically, is simply the deranged ramblings of a very old man who has survived the trenches of the First World War and had his heart broken by one of the main characters, Monica, the whole narrative the incoherent reinventions of the key moments in his long troubled life, most of which has been spent in a lunatic asylum. Yet, it could also be stated that [and it has, by the very same reader who first alerted me to Unbelievable Things] this marvellous book may just be the equivalent of a far future games console cartridge, a game played by a stranded starship crew while they wait for the intergalactic equivalent of the RAC to turn up and repair the broken-down ship. All said and done, Unbelievable Things is everything you want it to be – and some more. It will drive you insane and send you into paroxysms of laughter, it will spin you into wonder with its allusions and gimmickry, its intertextuality will force you to read more literary fiction, its numerous voices, idioms and characters will tie you up in metaphorical and lyrical knots. It is up to you to try and untie them. In short, Unbelievable Things does everything a great work of fiction should do – all you have to do is sit, open the first page and get ready to be entertained.

Lee Rourke © 2005.

Ellis Sharp - The Dump.

2005-03-09T14:54:00.000Z

Ellis Sharp – The Dump.

*****

Well, let’s get one thing straight: there’s nothing flimsy about Ellis Sharp’s The Dump. Don’t let the book's scant ninety-two pages fool you. Oh no. The Dump, published by the inimitable Zoilus Press, is a behemoth, a howling caterwaul of gargantuan proportions. A relentless ninety-two page outpouring so dense, so deliciously jam-packed with literary allusion, linguistic inventiveness and socio-political truisms it should leave you salivating dribbling maddening for more. And it does, it truly warrants immediate re-reading. As Mac Daly opines in the blurb: “I opened, read and closed The Dump in a state of bewildered excitation. It prompted so many questions; only a re-reading will give some more answers…” And he’s right of course, this book is chock-a-block with answers, you just have to dig deep that’s all – as one would looking for treasure within a mouldy, stinking rotten terrain. The Dump’s candour slugs you with such force, such bowel-busting ferocity it leaves you wondering why this book isn’t face out on the shelves of every major bookstore the width and breadth of the country. The Dump is a cry out against all that is wrong with society and with late Capitalism in particular (its politics, culture, art and literature). Just as in T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland Ellis Sharp’s The Dump is where the forgotten products of the urban sprawl and rejected end up; all the dregs, the slops, the scraps and tit-bits, the ugly discarded leftovers we don’t want anymore, the used and abused – The Dump is the state we’re in, the last refuge of the endless, mindless marginalised, the stripped and dejected throngs who have been chewed up and mercilessly spat out into its desolate, damp and bitterly cold environs. And just like Eliot’s Wasteland Sharp’s Dump will leave you exalted and, to reiterate once again, quite breathless in wonderment, eager to find out more. But be careful not to misconstrue me here, unlike The Wasteland, The Dump is non-exclusive and it’s far from elitist. The Dump, quite frankly, is open to all.

Plot? Well, it does exactly what it says on the tin actually: “[The Dump]…takes us inside the mind of a half-deranged inhabitant of ‘The Dump,’ a vast waste tip on the edge of London, where the outcasts of our society wander amidst its filth and rubbish.” Ultimately The Dump is “a void, to be avoided” (Pg 19), and its opening scenes fully clarify this statement. Reminiscent of the ferry crossing incident in Celine’s Death On Credit, or anything Francois Rabelais could muster in his faeces-drenched Gargantua and Pantagruel, the opening pages to The Dump are a wonderfully observed descent into scatological surrealism. Imagine, if you can, the entire Royal Family, in the company of various dignitaries, floating over the vast waste tip and its contained occupants in a giant air balloon (or Aerostat). Then, en masse and in perfect symmetry, whilst opening shutters and flaps, baring naked buttocks and cocks, the Queen and her assorted dignitaries proceed to piss, puke, spit and defecate with gay abandon on the unfortunate inhabitants below. Picture pandemonium as The Dump dwellers scatter and scramble for cover, rolling in the Queens shit and piss, reeking and shrieking. And all the while the queen basking in the hilarity of it all – elucidated and painted expertly within the Proustian confines of Sharp’s mellifluous prose of course. But this isn’t some act of juvenilia on Sharp’s part, the symbolism is quite apt. Leonardo da Vinci is stated at believing human beings were mere machines invented to pass excrement through. If this is the case Ellis Sharp’s The Dump takes this simple thought one step further – a rather logical step. In The Dump society is the mechanism in which the excrement trickles through slowly from the pristine top to the soiled bottom. In fact the narrator’s journey resembles the journey of, some once fresh, food-stuff as it travels through the digestion system, the numerous dietary tracts and winding intestine where it is dutifully, slowly stripped of all nutrients until all we are left with is rancid spleen and bile before it is passed through the bowel into the unwashed abyss.

We see the products of inertia exemplified in The Dump, people are loners, they drift off into their own worlds, they are distrustful and on the rare occasions people actually do congregate it quickly descends into violence. There is no escape because, quite simply, nobody cares – nobody cares about each other on the inside and outside The Dump nobody cares about anything else other than their immediate lives. The metaphors are abundant.

The Dump is a rather loud novel; the cacophony of voices is rather alarming, a multitude of sirens alerting the outer world to its inhabitants struggles and plight. Yet, etched into the barrage of vernacular and colloquialisms is a solemn tranquillity – that same sombreness First World War Diarists often speak of: the inexplicable beauty in a silent flame, the smoke, ash and embers of a ruined past. The splenetic narrator, in true Metafictionist style, constantly disassociates himself with the narrative, changing facts and dialogue after various rewrites and drafts of the manuscript before finally letting go and tying it, rather poetically, to a balloon, sending it up into the stratosphere and over the electrified walls of The Dump forever.

The sheer flight of Ellis Sharp’s imagination is the true strength of this intense novel; it is relentless in its scope. The book needs more than just reviews and deserves a full case study regarding its linguistic, literary and political mechanisms and allusions. Ellis Sharp’s The Dump needs further unravelling. Quite frankly a short review doesn’t do this book the justice it so thoroughly deserves. In keeping with Mac Daly’s earlier statement Albert Camus once harangued, regarding the reading of Franz Kafka: “The whole art of Kafka consists in forcing the reader to re-read. His endings, or his absence of endings, suggest explanations which, however, are not revealed in clear language but, before they seem justified, require that the story be reread from another point of view.” (Pg 112 Myth of Sisyphus). And just like Kafka Ellis Sharp demands the same, it is with The Dump, as the narrative falls/slides into the abyss at the final/mid sentence of the narrator the reader is forced to return to the very beginning for further scrutiny, albeit a tad wiser and self-assured. One assumes the reader must take into account a deep literary understanding here on Sharp’s part, more in line with Joyce’s “recirculation” rather than a flippant abruptness invented to tease and bamboozle the reader. So there it is. Ellis Sharp’s The Dump. As for me, you. Read this book.

The Duke Spirit - Lion Rip.

2005-02-28T20:52:00.000Z

The Duke Spirit - Lion Rip.

****

Has anything as mind-blowingly cool, achingly unruffled as The Duke Spirit appeared from the darkest depths of North London in the last ten years? I seriously doubt it. Forget East-End wastrels such as The Paddingtons, The Others et al. The Duke Spirit have arrived Ladies and Gentlemen. Think scuzzed-up Spaceman 3 and New York (yes, I know) circa 67-79, briefly, just for a fleeting instant, savour the moment, cherish it – and then forget about it forever. For this is where it begins anew. The Duke Spirit simply ooze that special ingredient, that knowing all freshly unearthed wonders possess: raw, untouched talent. Lion Rip moves so effortlessly, so smoothly, it is quite sublime. It’s a wonderful mover, a single made all the more rousing by Leila Moss’s snarling lead vocals. It’s frenetic, fast and it’s sure to get those kids skulking in the corner all dressed up in black on to the dance-floor once and for all. If you miss this single then you’re missing out full-stop.

Banksy - Cut It Out.

2005-02-16T00:35:00.000Z

Cut It Out - Banksy.

***

One wonders why anyone who lives outside of certain East and Westend pockets of inner-city London should ever have heard of Banksy - but they do. And is it any wonder? With artistic stunts and pranks such as hanging his own works in the Tate Britain and Natural History Museum respectively without the authorities knowledge the elusive Banksy has made quite a name for himself. Or maybe it was the unveiling of his brass statue mocking the British Justice System in Clerkenwell Square that caught everyone's eye, er, the stencilling of cows and other assorted livestock, the Acid-House smiling riot police peering down from a bridge in Shoreditch (although this didn't seem to go down too well in America of all places if the following email - one of many printed in the back of the book for our amusement - is anything to go buy: "Bansky: Respect pigs motherfucker. Would you like i paint your fucking english milky face? xxxxxx". Wow, someone actually knows what Banksy looks like then?). Cut It Out is Banksy's most recent collection. It is a quirky, humorous gathering of his varied street art. Banksy is obviously politically aware and his astute perception is ostensible throughout this savvy little book. His anti-war sentiments, for example, are highly admirable and commendable. Cut It Out is worth owning solely because of the ephemeral nature of Banksy's work, most are stolen, wiped clean or destroyed - maybe if you look hard enough in deepest, darkest Hoxton, Clerkenwell, a gable end in Hackney or under an overpass in Paddington or Ladbroke Grove you'll find a decent smattering but, rather sadly, it looks like the authorities are ahead as I write. Most I notice are gone within a day or two. So if you want to know what Banksy is up to, dip into his manifesto and capture his ephemeral stencilling, then buy the book - or the rats will get there first.

The Kills - Electric Ballroom.

2005-02-11T13:13:00.000Z

The Kills - Electric Ballroom Wed 9th Feb.

***

It's official - The Kills are the undisputed king and queen of sleaze rock. Just picture a sweaty room filled with Hotel's snarling fuzzbox guitar, a random drum machine and VV's mordant sex-ridden strung-out vocals. And guess what? It works. Considering all this scuzzy mayhem is created by just two perfectly formed and achingly serious people just helps to intensify the moment - the whole room was literally awash with their uber-cool wasted dirge. Fried My Little Brains poured down upon everyone present with added vitriolic verve and studied desperation, storming along with a guitar riff from planet New York underground (think Velvets meet Hendrix) as VV does her best to imitate a beautiful shaman twisting and contorting across the stage, bouncing from giant speaker-stack to another in perfect symmetry with each electronic beat. Current single The Good Ones sounds even better live - capturing a unique energy whilst not sounding as repetitive as it does on record. This was an occasion of sleazy-cool and the energy and feeling created by this most pretentious duet (and I mean that as a compliment) is well worth a second visit. Keep your ears close to the ground folks as The Kills will be coming your way soon.

Matthew McIntosh - Well

2005-01-27T16:24:00.000Z

Matthew McIntosh - Well.

****

"Maybe not always, but a lot of the time, it doesn't matter where I actually am, it's all the same..." And so starts this Sisyphean caterwaul - something scarecrow can relate to. Seven chapters of this tidy debut have the same title: "It's taking so damn long to get here." Each exemplifies the point of this book adroitly. First things first Well is a debut of prosodic virtuoso. The book is rattled by, spattered with and soaked to the bone by voices - it is a loud book (in the Gaddisian sense of the word). Well is set in a working-class American wasteland, Seattle to be precise and each of its character's are embroiled in, or escaping from disparate situations they can see no exit from. Some characters make fleeting appearances within the narrative, others more substantial, but all - in some way or another - are lost in a dark chasm of no escaping: A dark well, if you will allow me. Well is a classic debut, brimming with all the right ingredients - male angst, dissatisfaction - that help to drive such writers. But, it is Matthew McIntosh's prose style that screams the loudest. It is quite simply breathtaking in its density. Plot? A multi-narrative gone askew. The disparate of a working-class Seattle suburb eke out miserable existences while clinging on to the vain hope that something else, something better, or anything is just around the next corner. It isn't, of course. You get the picture. Debuts such as Well are seldom published - and if they are we rarely see them. Increasingly we see mainstream publishers taking fewer risks, ignoring such fresh work. Well is testimony to the realization that forward-thinking fiction can still find the support it so necessarily needs. Faber are publishing this gem over here - if only they would have the same trust in similar home-grown talent. Their last big-hitter also a state-side voice. But, as readers, we must continue to seek out these gems. Well is cutting, acerbic, dry and ravaged by every disappointment felt - this wearisome lament is a wretched, yet strangely heartwarming tale and McIntosh seems to have the ability to suck out all that is real and honest from the deepest of wounds. Well is pure dissatisfaction, a smudge, a long scratch through the white, pristine wall of contemporary fiction. Throw away Palahniuk's studied nihilism and think Manhattan Transfer with extra bite. In the wise argot of Shaun Ryder: double good.

Charles Portis - True Grit

2005-01-26T23:50:00.000Z

Charles Portis - True Grit.

****

A while back scarecrow opined that the American novel literally oozed voice. And here, quite frankly, is proof of just that. Charles Portis is a writer who can draw the reader into his narrative. Just ask Donna Tartt, she has “loved this book” since she was a child - as have her mother and grandmother (not since children you understand). We very rarely hear that much from Donna Tartt in the media so her introduction to this Bloomsbury edition is quite refreshing. And the book itself? (We’re not concerned with the film adaptation staring John Wayne). Well, True Grit is quite mesmerizing in its simplicity. It follows fourteen-year-old Mattie as she travels to claim her father’s – Frank Ross – body, gunned down in cold bitter blood by Tom Chancey. Along the way Mattie realizes that the authorities are doing nothing to find Chancey. Mattie soon bumps into Rooster – a man who possess, well he’s said to at least, oh the suspense, true grit. At this juncture the book begins to move as Rooster pulls Mattie with him deep down into Indian Country to help avenge her father’s murder. The book is quite a simple little tale really, as most good books are. True Grit is a bitter-sweet lament with a voice and inner-drive that is at once immediate and terse yet always comforting. Portis captures, one imagines, the idioms of the American South with passion, accuracy and aplomb. On the whole True Grit taps into the uncomplicated regions of the human condition, those same signifiers we can all relate to at once: pain, revenge, longing and love. Portis doesn’t overstep the mark and it is within this clarity of narrative True Grit gains its strength. This marvellous little cult classic is a book that thoroughly deserves the acclaim it is now receiving. And, like other American cult classics, such as Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn, True Grit is completely accessible to all. Read this book.

The Others - The Others

2005-01-26T13:33:00.000Z

The Others - The Others.

It has to be said that live The Others are tremendous, but transferred to record, well, um, they sound pretty bad I'm afraid. This eponymously titled album is literally split asunder, straight down the middle like a scratch in your favourite record, its dichotomy's and schism's ostensible to all - in the blue corner we have lead vocalist Mr Dominic Masters and in the red his fellow band mates. Can the failure of any debut be more clear cut than this? I doubt it. This record is haunted, let down, nay, dragged down by Mr Masters and it cannot be saved. Never have such adolescent, juvenile downright appallingly laughable and ridiculous lyrics been heard since, well, story-time at the nursery. For instance (from Stan Bowels): "I'd stare at your eyes as you helped the children You're quoting Voltaire or Ginsburg to the adorned in your kitchen Sipping ice tea in the summer Victoria park, yeah" Apparently this little number is about Pete Doherty and not the QPR legend. Or how about this (from current hit Lackey): "Wanna escape for a while I'll get a new idea I'll start up a band get a brand new plan find some way out of here You need some way to be free that's not just a dreeeeaam YOU NEED SOME WAY TO BE FREE THAT'S NOT JUST A DREEEEEAAAAAAM CHICKA-CHICKA-CHICKOWWWWW" I'm not even going to mention the sublimely ridiculous (from This is for the Poor): "This is for the poor and not you rich kids..." Okay fair enough Mr Masters, your atonal warbling voice is starting to grate now - and it really is a bad voice, you could say more Wurzel Gummidge than Iggy Pop. But miraculously, somehow, this record hits you. How? One may wonder. Bassist Johnny Others that's how - his punk-tinged Mancunian-esque bass pulls this record back from the brink. Tracks such as Psycho Vision seriously move along, rumbling with the same desires that make tracks of this ilk great. Music for the hell of it. Bowel-busting cool. Johnny Others steers the listener away from Mr Masters childish rants and the entire record is wondrously saved - just. But I don't think this is enough. The sad thing about this record is the underlying feeling the rest of the band do not seem to acquiesce with Mr Masters' teenage diatribe. And does Dominic Masters seem to care? I seriously doubt it. A shame really. Let's hope I'm wrong, because for the way this raggletaggle outfit treats its fans alone they deserve all the success in the world. So what can I say other than this is no Definitely Maybe and is a weak debut? Not much. This shows, but what the hell does that matter? I'm just a lone voice in the wind. The kids love it it'll be a huge hit. Go and see them live now.

John Fante - Ask the Dust

2005-01-19T10:16:00.000Z

John Fante - Ask the Dust

Say hello to Charles Bukowski's "God". Say hello to America's forgotten literary tour de force. Say hello to a mad, aberrant, mellifluous genius of the written word (and yes I did utter the word "genius" just then): John Fante, author of Ask the Dust. A scathing lament, a paean to lost love, an elegy dedicated to the individual spirit - for this is the world of Fante's wonderful anti-hero: Arturo Bandini. You'll be pleased to meet him, though the chances are he may not reciprocate such conviviality. Arturo's world is a Nietzschean caterwaul beneath a bright Californian backdrop. Never, to my knowledge, has Los Angeles been so honestly depicted and laid bare. Twenty-one year old Arturo is living in a squalid Bunker Hill hotel where, amongst other solipsistic predilections, his primary concerns are writing and sex. It is before this sun-drenched panorama Arturo's literary and romantic dreams are realised - yet never quite fulfilled. Arturo's whole existence circulates around Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress with fire in her soul, whom he dedicates each waking hour pursuing. A classic love/hate relationship is cast and it is in these bitter/sweet exchanges we see John Fante's writing at its very best - heavy with dry humour, tender, acerbic, sonorous and temperate. Ask the Dust, ultimately, assists as a conduit linking the outside with race, American prejudices, politics and an individuals position in a society that is, ostensibly, incongruous and empty. The microcosm in which Arturo Bandini walks is ultimately a window for us to gaze into and Ask the Dust is, indeed, a book we should all own.

Lee Rourke © 2004.

Albert Camus - Between Hell and Reason

2005-01-19T10:13:00.000Z

Albert Camus - Between Hell and Reason

This book, whilst chronologically following the events of the French Resistance and the German occupation of France, also serves as a concise insight into the political philosophies behind such noted works as The Outsider , The Plague , The Myth of Sisyphus , The Rebel and, more importantly, the man himself. With an unmitigated introduction by Elizabeth Young-Bruehl and a clear translation by Alexander De Garmont this collection of Combat (Parisian resistance Newspaper) editorials fully illustrates Camus' underlying beliefs throughout some of the most tumultuous events of his short epoch. Each editorial is journalistically laconic and deeply personal. Each conveying an intrinsic belief of the imperative and that man is ultimately wrong. Always a bastion of revolt Camus' sought to find an alternative solution to the prisons created by our own very actions and beliefs. This collection should be read for what it is - a mind at work demanding the impossible. Always searching, contradicting, sifting and longing for that clear answer.

Lee Rourke © 2004.

The Others - Stan Bowles

2005-01-19T10:11:00.000Z

Stan Bowles - The Others.

Okay, the jury's still out concerning this ramshackle lot. Live The Others are exciting, on record they are awkward and flat. Please allow me to elucidate. On stage frontman Dominic Masters (I won't mention the recent slimy NME interview or the, alleged, Crack habit) is the business, he prowls, wails, leaps, freaks out, charms and basically does what the hell he pleases. It is a pleasure to be in the same room as him. On record we get none of this, Masters' voice is idiosyncratic and plain annoying at times. But don't misconstrue me, Stan Bowles moves in a bass-driven British way. Bassist Johnny Others probably could be the bands hero, the man can play, he knows his history and he can fill a room with his hair alone (maybe himself and Miss Wainwright should acquaint themselves - Ed). The song? Well it uses the topsy-turvy mercurial life of QPR and Carlisle legend Stan Bowles as a (not too subtle) analogy for Pete Doherty's similarly tainted genius (yawn). Lyrically plain, but still bouncing with snarling energy. This is their second single to date and we still await a make or break album. Go and see The Others live, maybe buy the record, before it all comes crumbling down...Because that's what happens with these type of bands, isn't it?

Rufus Wainwright - The Barbican

2005-01-19T10:03:00.000Z

Rufus Wainwright Friday 29th October, The Barbican Centre

Last time I saw Rufus it was an altogether more family affair, with mothers, aunts, cousins and sisters all vying for centre stage. This show was most certainly focused on the man himself, although support remained from his sister Martha who began the evening with a huge voice, lyrical obscenities and a wayward leg clearly requiring a stage of its own. Rufus followed with a satisfying mix of songs from all three of his albums pleasing an audience that was already firmly converted. From the burlesque strains of 'Matinee Idol', the intimacy of 'Dinner at Eight' and most successfully the bigger band numbers of the 'Want One' album Rufus performed as if he wished his whole life was spent on stage. With two encores clearly anticipated and eagerly given it is easy to imagine a young Rufus with visions of Judy Garland songs and an adoring audience. Both of which were in attendance tonight. There were, of course, the more serious moments with references to the upcoming elections (at time of writing - Ed) and a tribute to Jeff Buckley including a rendition of 'Hallelujah', warmly received with the knowledge that this was as close as it could get. Other than this Rufus concentrated on his own repertoire and produced big song after big song whether alone with his piano or accompanied by his band. The attraction lay in the joy with which every number was performed and received and bar a few audience members unable to prevent themselves from being, well themselves, the evening was a pleasure.

GRE © 2004.

To the End of the World - Blaise Cendrars

2005-01-19T10:00:00.000Z

Blaise Cendrars - To the End of the World.

Firstly, I don't think you can actually call this a review. You'll see what I mean as you read on. Okay, this is a bugle call, a rallying of the troops, a call to arms for the cause of one man if you will. It couldn't be construed as anything else and, quite frankly, I wouldn't want it to be. So I'll begin: There's something refreshingly different about reading Blaise Cendrars, but to be honest I haven't quite worked out just what it is yet - and the simple fact that I never will makes it all the more appealing. But how did I ever find him in the first place? Maybe it had something to do with Henry Miller once calling Cendrars "...the most contemporary of contemporaries". I just had to seek him out and was instantly hooked (found a bedraggled 'Collected Works' in a second-hand bookshop). I don't know, there's just something utterly unique between the pages of a book written by Blaise Cendrars. To the End of the World is definitely bawdy and lends itself to the surreal, a chaotic mish-mash, a twirling, spiraling fiasco, a marvellous work of imagination that reveals itself before a seedy 1940's Parisian backdrop. This is the Paris Henry Miller longed to find, but somehow couldn't. But, please allow me the indulgence, To the End of the World is much more than the work of pure invention, it is Cendrars' Roman-a-clef. In it is hidden the clues to his crazy, nomadic, adventurous life. The women, the prostitutes, the vagabonds, the urchins, the aristocrats, the deserters, the thieves and pimps. They all pay a short, shuddering visit. The pages reek of lost, desperate dreams, the underbelly of society, the rancid off-cuts left to the dogs - a sour montage of ego and vanity left to rot in the gutter, kicked about in the wind and ultimately snubbed by any passing stranger that cares to look down his/her nose. To the End of the World is a special book indeed. We follow the daily trivialities of Therese, a septuagenarian actress long gone to seed, clinging on to an era long vanished, eking out a living sponging off various men and barfly's alike and opening her legs at any given opportunity. From the outset Therese is happy dedicating herself to a young, violent deserter from the Foreign Legion. In these achingly sad trysts we see Therese acting out her lost dreams, trying to regain something she never really had in the first place, before she is suddenly held for questioning over the murder of a local barman. And here the hapless, disparate Therese begins her final, appalling decent into oblivion. And Blaise Cendrars is there to capture every minute detail. Cendrars' writing is colourful, snappy, allegorical and terse - he plays with the image, polishing it until gleaming and then delightfully plunges it into the darkening squalid, gloopy quagmire with aplomb and glee. As it has been said before, there really isn't anything quite like reading Blaise Cendrars. To the End of the World is an often funny, manic, yet bleak tale of excessive vanity, written by one of Europe's lost avant garde imaginations. It can only be a good thing that his words are back with us again.

Stewart Home and Nicholas Blincoe...

2005-01-19T09:54:00.000Z

Stewart Home and Nicholas Blincoe - Filthy MacNasty's 20 Nov 04.

Most people already know about Filthy MacNasty's history, so I wont elucidate further. It seemed quite a fitting environment to sit sipping a few drinks while listening to a couple of extremely talented (if not stylistically similar) writers. Both turned up fashionably late, keeping a buoyant crowd of around seventy people waiting - not that anyone was too bothered. A Filthy MacNasty's crowd is a seen-it-all-before-worn-the-t-shirt affair. After 3AM's compere coolly introduced the two writers, a sartorially elegant and somewhat nervous Nicholas Blincoe took to the stage (well, microphone), and without a customary over-long preamble began to read from his critically well received Burning Paris. Sadly he made for difficult listening, adding to my assumption that almost all writers bitterly disappoint when reading from their own work. Why do they do this to themselves? Asked two of my companions. I shrugged and tried to explain that it was the presence of the writer that counted - but I felt I was fooling even myself in this assumption. Blincoe unapologetically stumbled and staggered (just like the drunken old man sitting at our table) around his chosen snippet. It was a shame, his exceptionally precise prose deserved better. In his defence, though, he was having to tackle the intruding drone from The Ramones (yes, it's that kind of establishment) seeping through the bar from the speakers in the other room - and a somewhat aloof, uninterested barmaid, collecting glasses and emptying ashtrays, clearly too cool for such literary matters. Blincoe rather sheepishly passed over the reading to Stewart Home to some rather enthusiastic (and somewhat sympathetic) applause. Now, Stewart Home has presence for such a small, unassuming man. He's got that surly look, that something behind the eyes. His striking girlfriend even more so. I was impressed:

I suppose you want me to read from Down and out in Shoreditch and Hoxton?

Well yes, Stewart. I was even more impressed when he began to rattle off the opening chapter of his most recent novel completely from memory and without the obligatory manuscript or precious tome at hand - word for word. He prowled the stage, snarling off sentences with venom. It was quite special to witness. He then rattled through the hilarious "ventriloquist's Dummy" chapter from 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess, again word for word, then treating us all to an incredibly in-your-face snippet from his vulgar post-modern novel Cunt. I must admit that I was heartily impressed with the man - but then again I would be, having lovingly devoured most of his work. The unemotional detachment he poured into each pornographic scene conveyed his point all the more clearly. It was easy to get him, so to speak. When finished Stewart Home skulked away, handing the microphone back over to, an even more terrified looking, Nicholas Blincoe. But he was fine:

You make me seem so bourgeois, Stewart...

YOU ARE BOURGEOIS, NICHOLAS...

Came a voice from the crowd. Blincoe laughed and this seemed to relax him a little, his second stab at reading being far more accomplished than the first. But, alas, by then it was too late, Stewart Home had already left his mark. The 3AM compere ended the proceedings and let the numerous toadies and sycophants swarm around each writer (I have no idea what these people say) while I slipped over to the bar, taking advantage of the momentary space. Reasonable night really.

Dan Yack - Blaise Cendrars

2005-01-19T09:50:00.000Z

Dan Yack - Blaise Cendrars.

In 1973 The Times Literary supplement, upon the posthumous publication of Guillaume Apollinaire's 'Les Onze Mille Verges', commented: "...Apollinaire was very much Apollinaire". And after reading him this oddity makes perfect sense. Well, if this is the case then the very same can be said about our man Mr Blaise Cendrars - most certainly. So we start with Cendrars' alter-ego: Dan Yack, the wildly eccentric English shipping millionaire "hell-raiser" and all round "envy of St Petersburg" - that is until he is ceremoniously dumped by the love of his life and found drunkenly writhing in a puddle of horse piss in the street, upon which he walks into the nearest bar and promptly falls asleep under the nearest table, finally waking up to find it occupied by three men whom he persuades to join him on a round the world voyage on his ship. Strange stuff indeed. Cendrars was famous for writing himself into his fiction - quite an easy task being quite a fictional character himself. Blaise Cendrars being the nom de plume of Frederic-Louis Sauser, a man who's whole life seemed to be purposely mythologized and interwoven with poetic embellishments. Blaise Cendrars never openly revealed himself - never honestly anyway. We see just what he wanted us to see. On reading Blaise Cendrars he is at once erratic, spiritual, tender, vitriolic, malicious, lucid and confusing. He broke every literary rule in the book and then, in tune with the mystical cliche he created, rewrote every last one of them. A strange, odd being. Everything a writer should be. Dan Yack, as with all Blaise Cendrars fiction, mixes fiction with fact with outright flights of imagination, the resulting novel leaning more on side with the fantastic rather than the fictional. Is it a travel yarn? A Roman-a-clef? A raucous lament? Put your hard earned money on all three I say - and then some. The novel follows the voyage and exploits of Dan Yack and his three companions: the artists Arkadie Goischman, a Jewish poet; Ivan Sabakov, a peasant sculptor and Andre Lamont, a French musician. Of course the voyage is doomed from the very outset - it couldn't be anything but - and it isn't long until the good ship GREEN STAR becomes stranded in pack-ice. With foolish arrogance Dan Yack orders the entire crew onto land - and it is here the novel takes its maddening turn. Do they have enough provisions? Will they keep their sanity throughout the harsh polar winter? Not a chance. The ensemble is doomed from start to finish. Arkadie Goischman loses his mind, Ivan Sabakov becomes obsessed with Dan Yack and Andre Lamont decides to smash up everything in sight - all this while Dan Yack himself ponders the sorry fact that he has lost the love of his life: Hedwiga. Unrequited love is most definitely not a bore. Blaise Cendrars' prose is unquestionably unique - almost alarmingly so. Yet, at times it borders on literary cliche itself, but for the sheer inventiveness and imaginative leaps in narrative and voice that never fail in pulling the prose back from the brink just at the right moment - and for the reader this is just what makes a book by this author so rewarding. Blaise Cendrars, maybe it's his swirling imaginative mix, his heady fictional mish-mash, his being different anyway that helps. Not surprising, given his French/Swiss/Scottish ancestry. Whatever it is, whatever they put in his veins, Blaise Cendrars positively reeked of it and it poured out from every pour like liquid gold. Henry Miller once tried to explain: "Everything is written in blood, but a blood that is saturated with starlight. You can look clean through him and see the planets wheeling. The silence he creates is deafening. It takes you back to the beginning of the world, to that hush which is engraved on the face of mystery." Bravo Henry! I couldn't have put it better myself. This mish-mash mirrored Blaise Cendrars' self-mythologized life, his life being as hectic - if not more so - than any of his books, but still, somehow, set in concrete, still and defined - whether embellished incident or absolute fact. Where, exactly, hasn't this man been to? What, for instance, hasn't he done? A truly wondrous mystery. So why, oh why is Blaise Cendrars not up there with the big guns? Most people I've spoken to - and I'd drop them all into the little dusty folder in my head entitled: BOOK PEOPLE - have never heard of poor old Cendrars, let alone read anything by him. This utterly perplexes me, but maybe I'm just not mixing in the right circles, I don't know. I'm starting to babble, I'll stop. So back to Dan Yack: with his companions raving mad, the ice-caps melting, the advent of the First World War looming on the horizon and poor old broken hearted Dan Yack, the novel's hectic conclusion is somewhat fraught. Dan Yack is a marvellous book to read - a pure baptism of fire for a Blaise Cendrars virgin. Read it and weep long tears of happiness goodbye, goodbye, goodbye to every other writer you've ever admired. Seriously, because Blaise Cendrars is very much Blaise Cendrars.

Aria Fritta - Ellis Sharp.

2005-01-19T00:48:00.000Z

Aria Fritta – Ellis Sharp.

*****

Aria Fritta is Ellis Sharp’s 9th title to date and his most recent (others include The Dump, Unbelievable Things, Lenin’s Trousers, To Wanstonia, Giacinta’s clams, Aleppo Button, Driving My Baby Back Home and Engels on Video). All are published by London’s marvellous Zoilus Press. But I could be quite wrong, as very little is known about this writer, there are probably countless more chap-books and pamphlets written by him circulating the back rooms of smoky subterranean cafés and independent bookstores the width and breath of Great Britain. You see, Ellis Sharp is that kind of writer, his prose (some would say surreal social commentary) is suffocating in its closeness and accuracy yet he, the writer, is as achingly distant and remote as can be and I, for one, like that about him, it’s quite a refreshing change in this age of crass commercialism. You certainly don’t see Ellis Sharp’s face leering out from yet another ubiquitous Borders high-street publicity blitzkrieg, oh no, budding readers have to search high and wide for this man, his work is passed down via word of mouth from one reader to another, his books sitting on the shelves of those rickety eons-old bookshops down dark alleyways the rabble just daren’t tread. Ellis Sharp is the genuine article – ever-so bitter-sweet, fervently underground and as Avant Garde as it gets in this rugged, idiosyncratic little isle. And the great thing is – he’ll probably hate me for saying it.

Aria Fritta comprises of forty-four short-short stories (some barely a page long). So what do we get? Well, Dubya gets stuck on level one of Goldeneye. An alien from Pluto tries its hand at a little earthly suburban domesticity. A young boy reacts to his first encounter with sweetcorn. A national TV treasure is targeted by the local vermin catcher. The Presidents penis is mistaken for a UFO. A sausage factory isn’t all that it appears to be. And a Puerperal Fever invades the land causing mass literary clichés. Yes, this is an odd, odd assortment. The whole collection can be read in one sitting or delved into at random – either way it does exactly what it says on the tin. And when you’re through with it you’re going to want to read the whole lot again. Believe me. For those of you who don’t already know Aria Fritta literally translates from the Italian as: Fried Air. A term the Italians use with punch when someone is talking absolute nonsense. But let’s get one thing straight: Ellis Sharp’s Aria Fritta is no book of nonsense. This book makes complete sense. Aria Fritta continues, with utter verve and conviction, the same vitriolic journey William Burroughs started in Naked Lunch – attacking all that is corrupt and absurd; waving its critical baton in the face of society’s accepted myopia’s, bourgeois follies and the sickening ubiquity of consumer-driven decadence and ambivalence. And Ellis Sharp’s weapon? Surreal, humorous, absurd acts of wild metaphor of course. But beneath all this clever tomfoolery lies a bona fide anger, an anger so ostensible it positively permeates from each page. It is this fury which propels the reader towards one hapless target after another. So who/what are Ellis Sharp’s targets? Judging from Aria Fritta just about everyone and everything; including US Presidents, George Bush, power, people of power, the abuse of power, society, society as construct, normality, social ambivalence, consumerism, capitalism, politics, the right, the left, the novel, the novelist, the Play Station generation (a self-flagellatory love of Ellis Sharp’s own it seems) – to name but a few.

The anger which fuels the surreal Aria Fritta paradoxically gives this collection a heavy dose of realism. We, as readers, just cannot ignore the underlying meaning of such vignettes, especially within our tumultuous epoch. As a collection of short fiction Ellis Sharp gets to his aim quite early – this is fiction as construct. A metafiction of spiralling maze-like metaphor and literary trapdoors. In Tom’s Childhood Trauma we see characterization used for this very purpose. In a clever nod and a wink to the work of B. S Johnson (whose spectre seems to willingly pervade at various intervals) we see young Tom fully aware of his purpose within the narrative, enough to have saved his first “gasp of Breath” for the narratives pivotal moment. Ellis Sharp, in the same way B. S. Johnson gave thought to space, sentence and paragraph, pulls the reader away from descriptive cul-de-sacs via omniscient characterization in the narrative. For example, in a longer story, Vermin, the narrator instructs the reader with nonchalance:

“Believing a rush of new paragraphs would break up the monotony of the printed page at this point (interestingly, this was just six weeks before he read Christie Marly’s Own Double Entry), Dr Bananes paused.”

Ellis Sharp uses his constructed characters to steer and encourage the reader within the narrative. With Vermin and Tom’s Childhood Trauma we see a debunking, a severe mocking of all bourgeois literary constructs – and, indeed, the literary status quo. Aria Fritta, in this respect, is an anti-narrative with literary, social and political purpose, in the same way we see writers such as Stuart Home delivering, novel after novel, bowel busting blows into the flabby, fat, self-indulgent gut of established intellectual form, Aria Fritta is yet more proof that literary fiction has imploded and is finally moving on again. But this doesn’t necessarily mean Ellis Sharp is anti-intellectual, he isn’t, and how can he be? His point has been sharpened with precision and when thrust it hits home. Ellis Sharp’s take on 9/11, for instance, is both refreshing and brutally honest. Ellis Sharp quite often aims straight for the jugular, quite literally. In Sausages a story which follows a conveyor belt in a sausage making factory the cow is substituted with a line of new-born babies awaiting their slaughter – babies procured via the internet one might add. Please bear with me. Vermin sticks a jagged dagger straight through the absurd notion that such procedures in the slaughterhouse/abattoir/meat industry are harmless to the animal. When the reader is forced to visualise each new-born baby, just like a row of dead cows, hanging from “hooks inserted into each baby’s rectum” it is hard to swallow the – overused and hackneyed – nonsensical diatribe of the meat industry (we’ve all heard it before and still seem to accept it) and the brutality begins to hit home: “humanely stunned”, “a simple slicing device which causes no discomfort what-so-ever”, “decapitated in a manner which causes the absolute minimum distress and discomfort. Good use is made of the heads, which are pulverised in a crusher. Powdered bone is high in both fibre and nutrients. Some is manufactured into cakes which provide a nutritious mid-day snack for babies in the truck cages on the long journey to Ireland. The rest is mixed with amputated and crushed toes to provide an excellent fertiliser sold under the brand name Naythan’s Garden-Gro”. I think we kind of get the picture. But it’s not all blood and guts. The book is hilarious, and will have many a reader smirking and guffawing.

But hold on, Ellis Sharp is not for everyone, how could he be? That would simply be absurd. Aria Fritta, though, is an important collection, just as Ellis Sharp is an important lone voice, confidently treading water in a commercial sea of filth and wretchedness. Ellis Sharp is simply rising above it and, most importantly, doing it his own way. The little man is starting to bite back and his voice is beginning to be heard. Ellis Sharp is a writer we should be seeking out in a climate such as ours – and I predict he will be. The insurrection starts here. Certain readers are beginning to turn their backs on the conglomerates, we’ve lost faith and Ellis Sharp and Zoilus Press will be where we turn to. And dare I say it, yes I will damn you, literary fiction is most definitely cool again. And I for one am quite deliriously happy about that.

The Astonished Man - Blaise Cendrars.

2005-01-18T11:09:00.000Z

The Astonished Man - Blaise Cendrars.

*****

In his candid preface Jeff Bursey quotes Blaise Cendrars from a letter to the painter Robert Delaunay circa 1917, in it Cendrars proclaims: "I don't want to be part of the gang. I am not behind, as you say, but ahead...It all belongs to yesterday, not to today. I will be visible tomorrow. Today, I'm working". This little snippet of pure Cendrars arrogance is the true crux to his thinking and his workman-like philosophy. For, indeed, Cendrars was a worker, a real writer who experienced life in all its various phases and then put pen to paper until he was happy with the result. And the end result? Well, think big, elongated works of surreal humour, deadpan caricature, heartbreaking melancholy and a virtuoso prose style matched by few. Blaise Cendrars never ceased working, he liked it that way and this fiery dynamo never gave in. So what is The Astonished Man? Well, it's a memoir with a difference - the simple difference being it was written by Blaise Cendrars. As a writers writer Blaise Cendrars knew many, he also mixed with actors, filmmakers, poets, artists and aristocrats; yet none are mentioned in this so called memoir. In The Astonished Man Cendrars litters his narrative, not with the artists of his generation but with the Gypsies he met on his travels, the pimps, the prostitutes, the thieves; he takes the reader from the First World War trenches across vast continents in sprawling, complex, sonorous sentences that lift the reader out of the humdrum. Blaise Cendrars wrote against the grain in a style that preceded Gonzo luminaries such as Hunter. S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe a good thirty years or so. His reportage was assiduous, garrulous and inimitable. Taciturn in nature with an honest voice that somehow manages to shine through all the vainglorious bombast and braggadocio. Admittedly this boastful book is difficult to absorb and at times quite antiquated in world views, but, as in most of his books, the unique structure and prose style lift you away from such thoughts, snatched in the blink of an eye, hoodwinked and press-ganged back for the remainder of his journey - like it or not. And for this Cendrars needs to be saluted; a man who created his own myth and then pissed all over it, a man who knew the power of form, a man who embellished a story for the sheer excitement it caused, a man whose tone and pitch could balance absurd reasoning with melancholic pathos without straining the weight of each measured line; and finally a man who lived for the written word/world and nothing else. Blaise Cendrars and The Astonished Man is worth reading for this if nothing else.